Pain is an emotion, a psychological concept. Thoughts and education can affect it. Pain is essential for survival-warning signal. Can also distract and compromise your survival, as if you are attacked by a bear and get hurt. If you need to act and survive, despite the damage done to you, you have to limit feelings of pain. SO…. PAG controls the pain, electrical stimulations gives opiates. Explained below. Descending pain control • Neurons in areas of the mesencephalon (specially, in the periaqueductal gray , PAG-is in the midbrain) can control pain. • Electrical stimulation or the direct delivery of opiates to these areas produce

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Unformatted text preview: reduction of pain (analgesia). The same opiate systems mediate the analgesic effect of stress. You have areas in the brain responsible for stopping pain. Send axons down spinal cord and these ones inhibit pain signals from continuing to climb up spine to brain. EX: car crash, dont feel pain til a day later. In war, not feeling bullet, but thinking its water and not blood running down leg. Endogenous opiates ( endorphins ) increase the activity of PAG neurons that stimulate serotonergic neurons in the raphe nuclei. The serotonin output Cingulated cortex part of the limbic system-responsible for...
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